Opening Hours Christmas Eve and New Years Eve

Thank you to all practices who completed the survey about activity levels in your practices on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve in 2018. Despite using this data to show that patient demand is actually minimal during the afternoon of both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve and arguing that patient demand could be met through innovative use of sharing workload across practices within a PCN, the NHSE Area Team have mandated that both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve are normal working days. Practices will therefore need to be open in line with their normal hours for those days.

As an LMC we believe this is a missed opportunity for NHSE to reduce workload on individual practices and enhance collaborative working. We encourage PCNs to work alongside us in 2020 to look into ways of meeting individual practice GMS/PMS contractual obligations within the NHSE guidance in a more efficient and collaborative way.